Most illustrious knight, it is indeed a base, ugly and contaminated wit that is constantly occupied and curiously obsessed with the beauty of a female body! What spectacle, oh good God, more vile and ignoble can be presented to a mind of clear sensibilities than a rational man afflicted, tormented, gloomy, melancholic, who becomes now hot, now cold and trembling, now pale, now flushed, now confused, or now resolute; one who spends most of his time and the choice fruits of his life letting fall drop by drop the elixir of his brain by putting into conceits and in writing, and sealing on public monuments those continual tortures, dire torments, those persuasive speeches, those laborious complaints and most bitter labours inevitable beneath the tyranny of an unworthy, witless, stupid and odoriferous foulness!

What a tragicomedy! What act, I say, more worthy of pity and laughter can be presented to us upon this world's stage, in this scene of our consciousness, than of this host of individuals who became melancholy,meditative, unflinching, firm, faithful, lovers, devotees, admirers and slaves of a thing without trustworthiness, a thing deprived of all
constancy, destitute of any talent, vacant of any merit, without
acknowledgment or any gratitude, as incapable of sensibility, intelligence
or goodness, as a statue or image painted on a wall; a thing containing
more haughtiness, arrogance, insolence, contumely, anger, scorn, hypocrisy,
licentiousness, avarice, ingratitude and other ruinous vices, more poisons
and instruments of death than could have issued from the box of Pandora?
For such are the poisons which have only too commodious an abode in the
brain of that monster! Here we have written down on paper, enclosed in
books, placed before the eyes and sounded in the ear a noise, an uproar, a
blast of symbols, of emblems, of mottoes, of epistles, of sonnets, of
epigrams, of prolific notes, of excessive sweat, of life consumed, shrieks
which deafen the stars, laments which reverberate in the caves of hell,
tortures which affect living souls with stupor, sighs which make the gods
swoon with compassion, and all this for those eyes, for those cheeks, for
that breast, for that whiteness, for that vermilion, for that speech, for
those teeth, for those lips, that hair, that dress, that robe, that glove,
that slipper, that shoe, that reserve, that little smile, that wryness,
that window-widow, that eclipsed sun, that scourge, that disgust, that
stink, that tomb, that latrine, that menstruum, that carrion, that quartan
ague, that excessive injury and distortion of nature, which with surface
appearance, a shadow, a phantasm, a dream, a Circean enchantment put to the
service of generation, deceives us as a species of beauty.

This is a beauty which comes and goes, is born and does, blooms and decays;
and is eternally beautiful for so very short a moment and within itself
truly and lastingly contains a cargo, a store-house, an emporium, a market
of all the filth, toxins and poisons which our step-mother nature is able
to produce; who having collected that seed of which she makes use, often
recompenses us by a stench, by repentance, by melancholy, by languor, by a
pain in the head, by a sense of undoing, by many other calamities which are
evident to everyone, so that one suffers bitterly, where formerly he
suffered only a little.

But what am I doing? What am I thinking? Do I perhaps despise the sun? Do I
regret perhaps my own and others having come into this world? Do I perhaps
wish to restrict men from gathering the sweetest fruit which the garden of
our earthly paradise can produce? Am I perhaps for impeding nature's holy
institution? Must I attempt to withdraw myself or any other from the
beloved sweet yoke which divine providence has placed about our necks? Have
I perhaps to persuade myself and others that our predecessors were born for
us, but that we were not born for our descendents? No, may God not desire
that this thought should ever come into my head! In fact, I add, that for
all the kingdoms and beatitudes which might ever be proposed or chosen for
me, never was I so wise and good that there could come to me the desire to
castrate myself or to become a eunuch. In fact I should be ashamed,
whatever may be my appearance, if I should desire ever to be second to any
one who worthily breaks bread in the service of nature and the blessed God.
And that such participation can be of assistance to one's good intentions I
leave for the consideration of him who can judge for himself. But I do not
believe I am caught. For I am certain that all the snares and nooses which
those people devise and have devised who specialize in knotting snares and
entanglements will never suffice for my enemies to ensnare and entangle me.
They would avail themselves (if I dare say it) of death itself, in order to
do me mischief. Nor do I believe myself to be frigid, for I do not think
that the snows of Mt. Caucusus or Ripheus would suffice to cool my passion.
See then if it is reason or some insufficiency which makes me speak.

What then do I mean? What conclusion do I wish to arrive at? What do I wish
to decide? What I would conclude and say, oh illustrious knight, is that
what belongs to Caesar be rendered unto Caesar and what belongs to God be
rendered unto God. I mean that although there are cases when not even
divine honors and adoration suffice for women, yet this does not mean that
we owe them divine honors and worship. I desire that women should be
honored and loved as women ought to be loved and honored. Loved and honored
for such cause, I say, and for so much, and in the measure due for the
little they are, at that time and occasion when they show the natural
virtue peculiar to them. That natural virtue is the beauty, the splendor,
and the humility without which one would esteem them to have been born in
this world more vainly than a poisonous fungous occupying the earth to the
detriment of better plants, more odious than any snake or viper which lifts
its head from the dust. I mean that everything in the universe, in order
that it have stability and constancy, has its own weight, number, order and
measure, so that it may be ordered and governed with all justice and
reason. Therefore Silenus, Bacchus, Pomona, Vertunnus, the god of Lampsacus
and similar gods of the drinking hall, gods of strong beer, and humble
wine, do not sit in heaven to drink nectar and taste ambrosia at the
banquet of Jove, Saturn, Pallus, Phoebus and similar gods; and their
vestments, temples, sacrifices and rites must differ from those of the
great gods.

Finally, I mean that these heroic frenzies have a heroic subject and
object, and therefore can no more be esteemed as vulgar and physical loves
than one can see dolphins in the trees of the forests or savage bears under
the rocks of the sea.

However, to deliver all from such suspicion, I thought at first of giving
this book a title similar to the book of Solomon which under the guise of
lovers and ordinary passions contains similarly divine and heroic frenzies,
as the mystics and cabbalistic doctors interpret; I wished, in fact, to
call it Canticle. But in the end I restrained myself for many reasons, of
which I shall report but two. One for the fear which I conceived of the
austere frown of certain Pharisees, who would judge me profane for usurping
sacred and supernatural titles in my natural and physical discourse, while
they, consummate scoundrels, and ministers of every ribaldry, usurp more
basely than one can say the names of holy ones, of saints, of divine
preachers, of the sons of God, of priests, of kings. But then we await that
divine judgment which will make manifest their malicious ignorance and
doctrines; our simple liberty and their malicious rules, censures and
institutions. The other for the great dissimilarity which is seen between
the appearance of this work and that one, even though the same mystery and
psychic substance is concealed under the shadow of the one and the other;
for no one doubts that the first idea of the Sage was to represent things
divine rather than to present other things; with him the figure is openly
and manifestly a figure, and the metaphorical sense is understood in such a
way that it cannot be denied to be metaphorical, when you hear of those
eyes of doves, that neck like a tower, that tongue of milk, that fragrance
of incense, those teeth that seem a flock of sheep returning from the bath,
those tresses that resemble goats descending the mountain of Galaad. But
this poem does not show us a face which so keenly invites one to seek a
latent and occult sense; so that through the ordinary mode of speech and by
similitudes more adapted to the sentiments which gentle lovers usually
employ, and experienced poets put in verse and rime, sentiments are
expressed similar to those used by the poets who spoke of Cythereida, or
Licoris, or Doris or Cynthia, Lesbia, Corynna, Laura and other such ladies.
Thus anyone could be easily persuaded that my primary and fundamental
intention may have been to express an ordinary love, which may have
dictated certain conceits to me, and afterwards, because it had been
rejected, may have borrowed wings for itself and become heroic; for it is
possible to convert any fable, romance, dream and prophetic enigma, and to
employ it by virtue of metaphor and allegorical disguise in such a way as
to signify all that pleases him who is skillful at tugging at the sense,
and is thus adept at making everything of everything, to follow the word of
the profound Anaxagoras. But think who will as it seems to him and pleases
him, in the end, willy nilly, if one is to be just, each must understand
and define it as I understand and define it, and not I as he would
understand it and depict it; for just as the passions of that Hebrew have
their own proper modes, succession and names, which no one has been able to
understand and could never explain better than he, if he were present, so
these canticles of mine have their own names, succession and modes which no
one can explain better and understand than myself, since I am not absent.

Of one thing I wish the world to be assured: what I have essayed in this
preliminary preface, wherein I address you in particular, excellent sir,
and in the dialogues formed upon the subsequent articles, sonnets and
stanzas, is to have everyone know that I should deem myself most shameful
and bestial, if with much thought, study and labor I should have ever
delighted or relished imitating (as they say) an Orpheus who adores a
living woman, and proposes after her death (if it be possible) to rescue
her from hell; when in fact I would hardly esteem her (without blushing) to
be worthy of being loved naturally even in that instant when her beauty is
in flower and when she has the power of bringing offspring to nature and to
God: so much the less would I desire to appear similar to certain poets and
versifiers who glory in a perpetual perseverance in such love, as in such a
pertinacious madness, which can certainly compete with all the other
species of folly that can reside in a human brain. So much, I say, am I
removed from that most vain, most vile and most infamous glory, that I
cannot believe any man who possesses a grain of sense and spirit can expend
any more love on such a thing than I have spent in the past and intend to
spend in the present. And, by my faith, if I wish to employ myself in
defending the nobility of that Tuscan poet, who showed himself so
distraught on the banks of the Sorgue for a lady of Valclusa, and not say
that he was a madman fit to be chained, I shall have to believe and force
myself to persuade others, that for lack of genius apt for higher things he
set himself the task of nourishing his melancholy, and belaboring his wit
in confusion, by analyzing the effects of an obstinate vulgar love, animal
and bestial, as so many others have done who formerly have sung the praises
of a fly, a beetle, an ass, of Silenus, of Priapus, of apes, and those who
have in our time sung the praises of urinals, of the shepherd's pipe, of
beans, of the bed, of lies, of dishonor, of the furnace, of the knife, of
famine, and of the plague, things which perhaps give the appearance of
being no less lofty and proud by reason of the celebrated voices of those
who sing of them than these and other ladies I have mentioned are, perhaps
by reason of the poets who have celebrated them.

Yet (that there be no mistake) I do not wish that here should be taxed the
dignity of those ladies who have been worthily praised and who are
praiseworthy: and those, especially, who may and do reside in this British
land, to whom we owe the love and fidelity of the guest; for even if one
were to find fault with the whole worold, one could not find fault with
this nation, which in this respect is not the terrestrial world, nor a part
of it, but is entirely separated from it, as you know: so that any
discourse regarding the whole feminine sex could not and would not include
any of your women, who must not be considered part of that sex; because
they are not women, they are not ladies, but, in the guise of ladies, they
are nymphs, goddesses and of celestial substance, among whom it is
permitted to contemplate that unique Dianba, whom I do not desire to name
in the rank or category of women.

[Queen Elizabeth] Let it be understood,
then, that I mean only the ordinary genus. And I should unworthily and
unjustly persecute any individual of this class: because to no particular
person ought the weakness and condition of the sex be imputed, just as as
defect or vice of constitution, assuming there is some fault or error
there, must be attributed to the species or to nature, and not in
particular to the individuals of the class. Truly, with respect to that
sex, what I abominate is that zealous and disordered venereal love which
some are accustomed to expend for it, so that they come to the point of
making their wit the slave of woman, and of degrading the noblest powers
and actions of the intellectual soul.

If my intentions are understood, far
from being saddened and becoming vexed with me because of my natural and
truthful discourse, every honest and chaste woman will rather agree with me
and love me the more because of it; and they will allow that the venereal
love women have for men is a dishonorable thing, as I actively reprove the
venereal love men have for women.

Therefore, with a determined heart, mind,
opinion and purpose, I affirm that my first and principal, secondary and
subordinate, final and ultimate design in this work to which I have been
called, was and is to signify divine contemplation and present the eye and
ear with other frenzies, not those caused by vulgar love, but those caused
by heroic love. These frenzies will be explained in two parts, each of
which will be divided into five dialogues.

"Right. Now could we move on please, the smell of these sick woods Doesn't become my complexion. Besides the guy got his arse burned in the end, remember?"